RECYCLING TEXTILES HOW IT GIVEN A SECOND CHANCE

Textile recycling information sheet

why bother?	what you can do
how's, what's and where's of recycling textiles	useful contacts

Textile recycling originated in the Yorkshire Dales about 200 years ago. These days the 'rag and bone' men are textile reclamation businesses, which collect textiles for reuse (often abroad), and send material to the 'wiping' and 'flocking' industry and fibres to be reclaimed to make new garments. Textiles made from both natural and man-made fibres can be recycled.

Why bother?

top of page It is estimated that more than 1 million tonnes of textiles are thrown away every year, with most of this coming from household sources. Textiles make up about 3% by weight of a household bin. At least 50% of the textiles we throw away are recyclable, however, the proportion of textile wastes reused or recycled annually in the UK is only around 25%.

Source:Analysis of household waste composition and factors driving waste increases - Dr. J. Parfitt, WRAP, December 2002
Although the majority of textile waste originates from household sources, waste textiles also arise during yarn and fabric manufacture, garment-making processes and from the retail industry. These are termed post-industrial waste, as opposed to the post-consumer waste which goes to jumble sales and charity shops. Together they provide a vast potential for recovery and recycling.
Recovery and recycling provide both environmental and economic benefits. Textile recovery:

• Reduces the need for landfill space. Textiles present particular problems in landfill as synthetic (man-made fibres) products will not decompose, while woollen garments do decompose and produce methane, which contributes to global warming.
• Reduces pressure on virgin resources.
• Aids the balance of payments as we import fewer materials for our needs.
• Results in less pollution and energy savings, as fibres do not have to be transported from abroad.

If everyone in the UK bought one reclaimed woollen garment each year, it would save an average of 371 million gallons of water (the average UK reservoir holds about 300 million gallons) and 480 tonnes of chemical dyestuffs. (Evergreen)

Reclaiming fibre avoids many of the polluting and energy intensive processes needed to make textiles from virgin materials, including: -

• Savings on energy consumption when processing, as items do not need to be re-dyed or scoured.
• Less effluent, as unlike raw wool, it does not have to be thoroughly washed using large volumes of water.
• Reduction of demand for dyes and fixing agents and the problems caused by their use and manufacture.

How's, what's and where's of recycling textiles

top of page The majority of post-consumer textiles are currently collected by charities like The Salvation Army, Scope and Oxfam. Some charities, for example Oxfam and The Salvation Army, sort collected material selling it on to merchants in the appropriate sectors.

Over 70% of the world's population use second hand clothes.(Textiles on line)

Some post-industrial waste is recycled 'in-house', usually in the yarn and fabric manufacturing sector. The rest, aside from going to landfill or incineration, is sent to merchants.

Collection Methods

At present the consumer has the option of putting textiles in 'clothes banks', taking them to charity shops or having them picked up for a jumble sale.
Recyclatex, a scheme run by the Textile Recycling Association in conjunction with local authorities and charities, provides textile banks for public use. The Salvation Army, Scope, and Oxfam also use a bank scheme in conjunction with other methods. Scope, for example, runs a national door-to-door textile collection service. There are about 3,000 textile banks nationwide, but clothes banks are only operating at about 25% capacity.
The Salvation Army is the largest operator of textile banks in the UK, with over 2,000 banks nationwide. On average, each of these banks is estimated to collect about six tonnes of textiles per year. Combined with door-to-door collections, The Salvation Army's textile recycling operations account for the processing of in excess of 17,000 tonnes of clothing a year. Clothes are given to the homeless, sold in charity shops or sold in developing countries in Africa, the Indian sub-continent and parts of Eastern Europe. Nearly 70% of items put into clothing banks are reused as clothes, and any un-wearable items are sold to merchants to be recycled and used as factory wiping cloths.

The average lifetime of a garment is about three years. (textiles on line)

Unsold and un-wearable clothing is sent to Oxfam's Wastesaver, a textile recycling plant in Huddersfield. These clothes are sold as raw materials to the textile recycling industry. Wastesaver handles about 100 tonnes a week.
The European Recycling Company Limited operates a network of collecting points for second-hand shoes, most of which are re-usable. The shoes are sorted according to their condition and then sold into developing countries, where they are locally reconditioned and resold at affordable prices in those areas. A pilot research study is being carried out in Germany to create techniques for reprocessing excess shoe materials into alternative products, such as sound insulation board.

Processing and Outlets for Waste Textiles

All collected textiles are sorted and graded by highly skilled, experienced workers, who are able to recognise the large variety of fibre types resulting from the introduction of synthetics and blended fibre fabrics. Once sorted the items are sent to various destinations as outlined below:

WEARABLE TEXTILES
SHOES Resold abroad in countries like Pakistan, India, Africa and East European countries.	CLOTHES Resold in the U.K. and abroad. Oxfam's Wastesaver provides clothes to Mozambique, Malawi or Angola for emergency use, as well as providing warm winter clothing to former Yugoslavia, Albania, Afghanistan and Northern Iraq.

UNWEARABLE TEXTILES
TROUSERS, SKIRTS, ETC.Sold to the 'flocking' industry. Items are shredded for fillers in car insulation, roofing felts, loudspeaker cones, panel linings, furniture padding etc.	WOOLLEN GARMENTSSold to specialist firms for fibre reclamation to make yarn or fabric.	COTTON AND SILKSorted into grades to make wiping cloths for a range of industries from automotive to mining, and for use in paper manufacture.

Post industrial waste is often reprocessed in house. Clippings from garment manufacture are also used by fibre reclaimers to make into garments, felt and blankets.
Some items will be reused by designers fashioning garments and bags from recovered items, however this is a very small sector within the overall destinations of textiles.

From the Textiles Recycling Association, published in A Way With Waste 1999.

The Fibre Reclamation Process

Mills grade incoming material into type and colour. The colour sorting means no re-dying has to take place, saving energy and pollutants. Initially the material is shredded into 'shoddy' (fibres). Depending on the end uses of the yarn e.g. a rug, other fibres are chosen to be blended with the shoddy. The blended mixture is carded to clean and mix the fibres, and spun ready for weaving or knitting.

The Recycling Scene

Evergreen produces yarns and fabrics from recycled fibres. Their most successful products are inblends spun from English and Chinese hemp and recycled denim, in addition to other recycled fibre blends containing wool, cashmere, silk and PET (polyester made from post-consumer recycled plastic drinks bottles and tencel, a fibre made from wool).
The reuse of clothes is promoting a new breed of designer. NoLoGo are a team of volunteer designers set up by Oxfam who restyle donated garments and fabrics, selling them on at some Oxfam shops.

The Recycled Products Guide has details of products made from recycled textiles. Available at www.recycledproducts.org.uk

The export market is rapidly growing as more market points are set up abroad. Some merchants also offer an array of services to encourage more collection, such as security uniform shredding prior to recycling.

What You Can Do

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• Take your used clothes to a textile bank. Contact the recycling officer in your local authority if there are no banks in your area and ask why; they may collect textiles through other means. Alternatively you can take used clothing to local charity shops.
• Give old clothes/shoes/curtains/handbags etc. to jumble sales. Remember to tie shoes together: part of the 6% of textiles which is wastage for merchants are single shoes.
• Buy second-hand clothes - you can often pick up unusual period pieces! If bought from a charity shop, it will also benefit a charity. 

UK DUSTBIN OF EUROPE..

UK 'landfill dustbin of Europe'

The UK could run out of landfill space in nine years' time The UK is the "dustbin of Europe", according to a new study. The UK dumps more household waste into landfill than any other country in the European Union, research by the Local Government Association shows. UK households sent 22.6 million tonnes of rubbish to landfill in 2004/5 - the most recent year for which comparable figures are available across the EU. However, government figures for 2006/7 show households recycled record amounts and levels of landfill waste fell. Between 2005/6 and 2006/7, the proportion of household waste which was recycled or composted rose from 27.1% to 30.7%, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. And the amount being sent to landfill fell from 17.9 million tonnes to 16.9 million tonnes. The LGA said that indications were that other European countries had also cut their landfill amounts since 2005, leaving the UK still "at the top of the rubbish heap". The UK came top in 2004/5 for overall amount of rubbish dumped, but third behind Bulgaria and the Irish Republic when the amount per head of population was calculated. The LGA warned that an area of 109 square miles was already used as landfill in the UK. The association, which represents councils in England, said that if the current trend continued, the UK could run out of landfill space in under nine years. The figures for 2004/5 show the UK sent the same amount of rubbish to landfill as the 18 EU countries with the lowest landfill rates combined, despite those countries having almost twice the population. The other countries with the highest amount of household rubbish thrown into landfill were Italy at 17.6 million tonnes and Spain at 14.2m. France sent around 12 million tonnes to landfill, Poland 8.6m and Germany 7.3m. The LGA said bold reforms on rubbish disposal were needed otherwise recycling rates will not rise fast enough to meet the EU Landfill Directive. The directive sets the UK a number of targets, including that by 2020 the amount of biodegradable municipal waste, including household rubbish, sent to landfill should be no more than 35% of the amount produced in 1995. For decades people have been used to being able to throw their rubbish away without worrying about the consequences. Those days are now over Paul Bettison Local Government Association Recycling around Europe In the future, councils, and consequently the taxpayer, are facing fines of up to £150 per tonne of rubbish over their "allowance" that is sent to landfill sites. Paul Bettison, chairman of the LGA's environment board, said: "For decades people have been used to being able to throw their rubbish away without worrying about the consequences. Those days are now over. "Local people, businesses and councils all have a vital role to play to protect our countryside before it becomes buried in a mountain of rubbish." He said it was encouraging to see that people were recycling more, but added: "The fact remains other countries on the continent are still recycling up to twice as much." A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs acknowledged the need to do more. It said: "We still lag behind much of Europe and we cannot afford to be complacent. We need to keep raising our performance if we are to meet future challenging landfill targets."

old ceremonial raffia cloths of the kuba people

Old ceremonial complete, multi-panel skirts / tcaka / ntshak / ntsak, with patchwork / pagne;
Wickelgewand / Wickeltuch
of the Bakuba / Kuba / Bushong / Bushoong / Bushongo / Ngeende / Ngongo tribe/people
from Congo / DRC / formerly Zaire

Various people are united in the Bakuba/Kuba kingdom, including the leading Bushong/Bushoong/Bushongo, the Ngeende and the Ngongo.

Many small rectangular mats were woven separately, hemmed and sewed together to make long wrap-around ceremonial dance skirts.
The dark colours were prepared from burned leaves.
The red colour was prepared from wet, small pieces of wood from the Tukula tree.
Each piece took months to make.
These skirts were worn wrapped multiple times.

The following are fragments from a text written by Duncan Clarke on the
Adire African Art WWW site:
“The embroidered and appliqué decorated raffia cloths of the Kuba peoples of the Kasai river region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) are the best known survivors of an ancient African tradition of fine quality raffia cloth weaving that was once widespread across the whole of Central Africa. Similar embroidered cloths from the Kongo kingdom on the coast to the west were greatly admired in post-Renaissance Europe and entered the curio cabinets and treasuries of nobles and kings as the finest products of African artistry
…
More recently their mastery of abstract patterning was a source of inspiration to artists such as Klee, and Matisse, who displayed part of his large collection on the wall of his studio.The Kuba are a diverse group of peoples who at least until recently had a number of distinct sub-styles of raffia cloth decoration. The main ceremonial occasions and court rituals for which long raffia dance skirts and embroidered cloth panels, mbal, were once produced are quite rare events today. The continued survival of the techniques in an age where most Kuba people wear factory produced cloth for everyday dress is mainly due to the importance of embroidered and appliqué cloth in funeral celebrations. Fine cloths are accumulated within the matrilineages over several generations, with much debate over which examples are suitable for use in the ceremonial presentations and exchanges accompanying funerals. Kuba apparently believe that they would not be recognised by their clan ancestors in the land of the dead unless they were correctly dressed in high quality raffia textiles.
…
Among the Kuba peoples of the Kasai river region in Congo men are responsible for the weaving of raffia cloth, but once the cloth is complete it is the responsibility of women to prepare it for decoration.
The cloth as woven is stiff and rough with loose and uneven edges. Even for everyday use it must be hemmed and softened before it can be sewn into a larger garment. If it is to form one of the main prestige garments, the dancing skirt, it will be softened by pounding it in a large wooden mortar, and in some cases treated with a wine-red or brown dye.
It was previously thought that the actual process of decorating the cloths was done only by women, but recent research by Patricia Darish suggests that men are responsible for decorating the rectangular skirts that they wear themselves, while women decorate smaller female dancing skirts and cut-pile embroidered panels.
Among the decorative techniques that both men and women may use are certain types of embroidery, appliqué and reverse appliqué, patchwork, dyeing, and tie dyeing.
Women's dance skirts are up to nine yards in length, being wound several times around the body and folded down over a belt.
The men's skirts are significantly longer and normally have distinct borders often with a fringe of raffia bobbles.
Appliqué, often outlined and emphasized by sewing around the design area with a darker thread, is one of the two most important decorative techniques utilised on Kuba ceremonial textiles. It has been suggested that the use of appliqué among the Kuba arose out of the need to repair the holes in cloth caused by the rigorous pounding of the woven raffia required to achieve the desired softness. Right-angled, rectangular, or circular patches are sewn over the holes that emerge in the softening process, while other patches are then sewn on undamaged areas of the cloth to balance the overall visual effect.
Support for the idea that this may be the origin of the use of appliqué is provided by examining some of the oldest Kuba dance skirts in museum collections. The bulk of the patches on some of these do seem to have been motivated by the need to repair holes and achieve a balanced design, with quite large areas of cloth left plain. In later examples there is a tendency to cover the whole surface of the cloth with appliqué, often including some figurative designs.”
To more information in the text by Ann E. Svenson,

African cloth

The main method of decorating cloth throughout Africa is the dyeing of thread or completed cloths. Although there were a small range of locally produced plant dyes that allowed weavers in most areas to produce a few shades of brown, green, yellow, and in some cases red, by far the most important dye in Africa has been indigo. The vast majority of cloth produced on the continent over the centuries was simple designs produced by combining the natural white (and sometimes beige) of the cotton fibres with stripes of various shades of indigo blue. Depending on the relative density of the warp and weft threads, the resulting cloths could have stripes down the strip (warp- faced) or across the strip (weft-faced.)

warp faced cloth	weft faced cloth

Dyeing was itself an important business at which high degrees of specialist skill was developed in centres such as the Hausa city of Kano. Very thin, fine quality, narrow-strip cloth dyed a dark indigo in villages near Kano, then carefully beaten with extra indigo paste by specialist cloth beaters until it took on a glazed sheen, are still an extremely expensive and highly valued cloth worn as face veils by Tuareg and other nomads throughout North Africa. See our indigo dyeing page.
In addition to pattern effects such as stripes and checks produced by varying the colours of thread used, African weavers utilise a limited set of decorative techniques in the process of weaving cloth. These include float weaving, where extra threads float across, or more rarely down, a piece of cloth, openwork, pile weave, and more rarely tapestry weave, and weft inserts.

supplementary weft float - extra design weft threads float across the strip.	supplementary warp float - extra design warp threads float down the strip.
openwork - in typical Yoruba style with threads floated down cloth strip	pile weave on an Ijebu Yoruba shawl

There are also a number of techniques used to decorate a cloth after it has been woven. Most of these had their origins in the indigenous weaving industry but have later been applied to the decoration of imported cloth. Dyers have utilised a variety of methods of resist dyeing, i.e. the dyeing of thread or fabric which has been treated so that part of it resists the dye, leaving a pattern on the cloth. These include ikat weaving among the Baule of Côte D'Ivoire and the Yoruba of Nigeria and a number of traditions that utilise starch resist or tie and dye, of which the adire of the Yoruba is best known. A separate and unique method of dyeing is used to produce the mud-dyed bogolanfini in Mali. The Asante of Ghana utilise a type of printing using stamps made from sections of calabash shell to produce a patterned cloth called adinkra. Embroidery is found in numerous styles, including on the Kuba raffia cloths of Congo and the robes of northern Nigeria. Finally there are a few distinct traditions of applique, where sections from different cloths are sewn together to make designs. Among the best known of these are the flags of the Fon kings of precolonial Danhome, and the Asafo war flags of the Fante companies of coastal Ghana.

Textile recycling assoiation

Textiles

* FOR our textiles price indicators, click on the Textiles Prices Archive link to the left - or you can also see below for 2012 price indicators *

Despite currency and demand fluctuations in overseas markets, demand for used clothing from the UK has remained generally good over the past few years.

Most UK clothing material is collected via the bank system and from charity shops, although an increasing amount is also collected door-to-door.

While selling second hand clothes in the UK is still an option, especially through charity shops, increasingly clothes are exported for sale in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East. In addition, material which is not used for clothing can often be turned into wiping cloths and specifications have also been drawn up for these by the wiper and cloth manufacturers division of the Textile Recycling Association.

In recent years the UK textiles industry has come under increasing pressure. In particular, competition from sorting businesses in Eastern Europe has forced some companies to move their sorting operations out of the UK to similar regions. At the same time, political and currency issues also impact on the market.

In the UK, the second hand trade has suffered from the dual problem created by the expansion of cheap clothing shops and 'fast fashion' — discouraging people from buying second hand clothes while meaning clothes can be less durable when they do eventually enter the second hand market.

Following the economic downturn in late 2008, textile recyclers also expressed concerns that the amount of clothing entering the second hand market could decline as householders keep hold of clothing for longer.

Disposal

The majority of textiles thrown out by households ends up in landfill, with Defra estimating that 1.5 million tonnes a year of unwanted clothing is eventually landfilled. Meanwhile, the Textile Recycling Association has estimated that in excess of 400,000 tonnes of textiles was collected and recycled in 2008.

As part of the Waste Strategy for England 2007, Defra identified clothing as one of 10 priority areas that would be examined within its Sustainable Consumption and Production work. The first stakeholder event for the Sustainable Clothing Roadmap was held in September 2007, and as well as launching an evidence project examining just how to maximise textile recycling and reuse, the question of introducing producer responsibility for textiles has also been raised.

In February 2009 the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan, which saw key stakeholders in the textile industry outline just how they planned to increase their sustainability, was launched.

The high price of textiles has prompted concerns over widespread theft of material from both textile banks and door-to-door collection bags, with some claiming organised criminals are involved. In January 2011, the Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd, held a round-table meeting involving representatives from the textile recycling industry, charities, regulatory bodies and police to address the issue of bogus textile collections.

Textile prices 2012

Three textile guide price categories are shown here:

• Textile banks - this reflects the amount that may be paid to a local authority or a waste management company, usually by a collector for material from textile banks. The payment may be amended if the local authority has to pay a bank hire fee or an element of the collection costs and if a donation is made to a charity.
• Shop collections - this price indicates the amount which may be paid by a collector to a charity shop for clothes the shop has not sold to the public directly. Prices vary on content from poorer quality material through to clothes and leather items.
• Charity rags - this is a general term for material, usually well-presented and often from charity shop collections, delivered to the factory of a larger textile collecting business which often exports used clothing and textiles.

Prices are £ per tonne of material

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun
Textile banks	270 - 340	260 - 350	260 - 360	260 - 360	260 - 360
Shop collections	490 - 550	500 - 560	500 - 560	500 - 560	500 - 570
Charity rags	580 - 650	600 - 670	610 - 690	610 - 700	620 - 700
	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Textile banks
Shop collections
Charity rags

Prices are £ per tonne of material

WHY RECYCLE?

So the important question is: why recycle textiles? The global issues surrounding the environment and the contentious use of landfill has never been more prominent and I&G Cohen are determined to divert as much textile waste as possible from landfill sites.
Did You Know?

• Over 1 million tonnes of textiles are thrown away every year mostly from domestic sources, of which only 25% are recycled.
• Textiles represent between 3% - 5% of household waste.
• Estimates for arising of textile waste vary between 550,000 - 900,000 tonnes each year.
• Recycling textiles can save up to 15 times the energy recoverable by incineration.
• Textiles make up 12% of landfill sites
• In one year discarded clothing would fill Old Trafford Football Stadium
• If everyone in the UK bought one reclaimed woollen garment each year, it would save an average of 371 million gallons of water, (the average UK reservoir holds about 300 million gallons) and 480 tonnes of chemical dyestuffs- (source: evergreen)
• There are about 6,000 textile banks nationwide, but clothes banks are only operating at about 25% capacity
• Over 70% of the world's population use second hand clothes
• Discarded clothing and shoes are typically sent to landfill. Textiles present particular problems in landfill. Synthetic (man-made fibres) products do not decompose. Woollen garments do decompose, but in doing so they produce methane, which contributes to global warming and climate change. This is an ominous warning which only highlights the importance of recycling in textiles.

What are the benefits of recycling?
When asking why recycle textiles there are further benefits that extend outside the immediate environmental positives. Recycling in textiles in the UK provides an affordable source of clothing to disadvantaged people in the developing world and emerging countries in Eastern Europe. In many of these countries it also provides the basis of economic growth by providing employment for much of the population.
Alan Wheeler of the Textile Recycling Association confirms this when he says this "clothing recycling is not only good for the environment, but also that it has an important social and economic role to play. The benefits extend to the UK where we estimate that private textile reclamation businesses employ around 5 - 10,000 people, with a further 9,500 employed in UK charity shops. The public and politicians should be fully aware of the crucial contributions this industry makes to the world economy and sustainable development."
Our work at I&G also provides a help to local authorities and local communities. For example local councils such as Gateshead Council currently pay about £30 for every tonne of material sent to landfill. If we multiply this by waste produced by Gateshead residents' last year, then the 115,000 tonnes of gives a waste disposal bill of over £2 million pounds. We can help these local councils save money particularly during this current economic climate by diverting textile waste from landfill and therefore cutting local council’s waste expenditure.
On a positive note according to DEFRA, in 2008-9 the total waste collected from the UK's 25m households dropped slightly to 24.3m tonnes. Of this, 9.1m tonnes were recycled. Almost all of the remainder went to landfill. A DEFRA spokesman claims, "We can't keep on sending textile waste to landfill, People are already reducing the amount of waste they produce, and are reusing and recycling more, and we are working hard to increase this,"
What Can I Do? Take your used clothes to a textile recycling bank. Contact the recycling officer in your local authority if there are no banks in your area and ask why not? They may collect textiles through other means.
Or next time one of our care2collect bags comes through your door put some of your unwanted clothing in and we will happily collect your used goods, averting textile waste from landfill whilst working on behalf of a number of worthwhile charities.
Where can I get more information?
There are lots of great sites to visit to find out more about textile recycling and recycling in general. These are just a few:
The Textile Recycling Association >

Textiles

• Just the Facts
• Collecting Textiles
• Recycling Textiles

Fleece, flannel, corduroy, cotton, nylon, denim, wool, and linen. What can you do with these fibers when you’re finished wearing them, sleeping on them, or draping them over your windows? One way to benefit both your community and the environment is to donate used textiles to charitable organizations. Most recovered household textiles end up at these organizations, who sell or donate the majority of these products. The remainder go to either a textile recovery facility or the landfill.

Just the Facts

• An estimated 13.1 million tons of textiles were generated in 2010, or 5.3 percent of total municipal solid waste (MSW) generation.
• An estimated 14.0 percent of textiles in clothing and footwear and 17.1 percent of items such as sheets and pillowcases was recovered for export or reprocessing in 2010.
• The recovery rate for all textiles was 15.0 percent in 2010, 2.0 million tons.

Collecting Textiles

More Textiles Information

The Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles (SMART) Association is working to increase the amount of textile waste that can be recovered while developing new uses, products and markets for products derived from preconsumer and postconsumer textile waste.
The Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service has created a fact sheet on household textile and apparel recycling (PDF) (4 pp, 1.6MB, about PDF) .

Textiles typically are not sorted at the point of collection, but keeping them clean and free from moisture is important. Once clothes get wet, stained, or mildewed, they cannot be sold for reuse. To prevent contamination, many charities offer enclosed drop-off boxes for clothing or other fabrics. Communities with curbside collection for textiles should educate donors on how to properly bag clothing.

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Recycling Textiles

Textile recovery facilities separate overly worn or stained clothing into a variety of categories. Based on data from the Council for Textile Recycling, it was estimated that 1.3 million tons of textiles in clothing were recovered for recycling in 2009. Some recovered textiles become wiping and polishing cloths. Cotton can be made into rags or form a component for new high-quality paper. Knitted or woven woolens and similar materials are "pulled" into a fibrous state for reuse by the textile industry in low-grade applications, such as car insulation or seat stuffing. Other types of fabric can be reprocessed into fibers for upholstery, insulation, and even building materials. Buttons and zippers are stripped off for reuse. Very little is left over at the end of the recycling process. The remaining natural materials, such as various grades of cotton, can be composted.

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How long it takes for waste to degrade

How long does it take for waste materials to decompose?

By Danny

How long does it take a plastic bag to break down or a glass bottle to decompose? What about a milk carton or a Styrofoam cup?
Sources for rates of decomposition of litter (trash) on the web give you different rates. Once you’ve done quite a few of these searches, you realise that it boils down to about three different lists, all repeatedly quoted (but not always mentioned as the source):

1. The New York Times (Nemve E. Metropolitan Diary, October 1, 2001):
Paper- 2.5 months; Orange Peel- 6 months; Milk Carton- 5 years; Cigarette Butt- 10-12 years; Plastic bag- 10-20 years; Disposable diaper- 75 years; Tin can- 100 years; Beer can- 200-500 years; Styrofoam- never (immortal)

2. Penn State University*: Paper-2-4 Weeks; Leaves-1-3 Months; Orange Peel- 6 Months; Milk Carton- 5 years; Plastic Bag- 10-20 Years; Plastic Container- 50-80 Years; Aluminium Can- 80 Years; Tin Can- 100 Years; Plastic Soda Bottle- 450 Years; Glass Bottle-500 Years; Styrofoam-Never.
*This list is widely quoted, but I could never actually find the original source.

3. “Pocket Guide to Marine Debris,” The Ocean Conservancy, 2004*
Paper towel – 2-4 weeks; Orange or banana peel- 2-5 weeks; Newspaper- 6 weeks; Apple core- 2 months ; Waxed milk carton- 3 months; Plywood- 1-3 years; Wool sock- 1-5 years; Cigarette filter- 1-50 years; Plastic Bag- 10-20 years; Plastic film canister- 20-30 years ; Nylon Fabric- 30-40 years; Leather- 50 years; Tin can- 50 years; Foamed plastic cup- 50 years; Rubber boat sole- 50-80 years; Foamed plastic buoy- 80 years; Aluminium can- 80-200 year ; Disposable diapers- 450 years; Plastic beverage bottles- 450 year; Plastic beverage bottles- 450 year; Monofilament fishing line- 600 years; Glass Bottle- 1,000,000 years.
* Quoted in U.S National Park Service; Mote Marine Lab, FL and “Garbage In, Garbage Out,” Audobon Magazine, Spt/Oct 1998.

So what does all this mean, and how do we explain differences above?
Lets separate the first two lists from the third. People seem to have missed the word “ocean” in the source, and it stands to reason that degradation at sea for some materials would be different to that on dry land.

Then there’s some clear overlap between the first two lists, so it is likely the NY Times article was using the Penn State info to some degree, and topping it up from other sources.

Then a couple of further observations:

1. Plastic bags: Although all three lists above say it takes 10-20 years for a plastic bag to degrade, there are quite a few references on the Net saying that plastic bags actually take hundreds of years to degrade. So where does this discrepancy come from? Well, it seems that scientists don’t actually know the answer to that one, although the time it takes a plastic bag to degrade is obviously a lot longer than on the lists popularly quoted on the Internet.

2. Different rates of breakdown: It turns out that materials decompose differently depending on a lot of factors, including temperature, oxygen levels and many others. One important factor is the presence of water. Many landfill sites are hermetically sealed with plastic (and covered at night), so water doesn’t seep into the waste. Ohio State University has shown that adding water to waste sites increases their rate of decomposition. And of course material degrades differently in the ocean.

Context: Where does most household garbage eventually end up once it leaves the home? Clearly in landfills. That’s where the next set of stats should come from.

Happy recycling!

http://www.thatdanny.com/2008/06/06/how-long-does-it-take-a-plastic-bag-or-a-glass-bottle-to-decompose/

How long does it take for plastics to biodegrade?

by William Harris

Drop a ketchup bottle on the floor, and you'll be thankful for polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, the nearly indestructible plastic used to make most containers and bottles. Drop the same bottle into a landfill, however, and you might have second thoughts. Why? Because petroleum-based plastics like PET don't decompose the same way organic material does. Wood, grass and food scraps undergo a process known as biodegradation when they're buried, which is a fancy way of saying they're transformed by bacteria in the soil into other useful compounds. But bacteria turn up their noses at plastic. Load their dinner plates with some plastic bags and bottles, and the one-celled gluttons will skip the meal entirely.

Based on this logic, it's safe to argue that plastic will never biodegrade. Of course, that's not the end of the story. Daniel Burd, a student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, recently demonstrated that certain types of bacteria can break down plastic. His research earned the top prize at the Canada-wide Science Fair, earning him $10,000 cash and a $20,000 scholarship [source: Kawawada].

Until other researchers can replicate Burd's experiment and waste treatment plants can implement any new processes, the only real way to break down plastic is through photodegradation. This kind of decomposition requires sunlight, not bacteria. When UV rays strike plastic, they break the bonds holding the long molecular chain together. Over time, this can turn a big piece of plastic into lots of little pieces.

Of course, plastic buried in a landfill rarely sees the light of day. But in the ocean, which is where a lot of discarded grocery bags, soft drink bottles and six-pack rings end up, plastic is bathed in as much light as water. In 2009, researchers from Nihon University in Chiba, Japan, found that plastic in warm ocean water can degrade in as little as a year. This doesn't sound so bad until you realize those small bits of plastic are toxic chemicals such as bisphenol A (BPA) and PS oligomer. These end up in the guts of animals or wash up on shorelines, where humans are most likely to come into direct contact with the toxins.

One solution to this environmental disaster is biodegradable plastic. There are two types currently on the market -- plant-based hydro-biodegradable plastic and petroleum-based oxo-biodegradable plastic. In the former category, polylactic acid (PLA), a plastic made from corn, tops the list as the most talked-about alternative. PLA decomposes into water and carbon dioxide in 47 to 90 days -- four times faster than a PET-based bag floating in the ocean. But conditions have to be just right to achieve these kinds of results. PLA breaks down most efficiently in commercial composting facilities at high temperatures. When buried in a landfill, a plastic bag made from corn may remain intact just as long as a plastic bag made from oil or natural gas.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/how-long-does-it-take-for-plastics-to-biodegrade.htm

Posted by Alice